Sunday, December 31, 2006

Elsewhere Online: Countertop Greenhouse

A countertop Greenhouse I gave to my mother for Christmas. Designed to help 4 small pots in a herb garden grow on the bay window at her house. Made out of simple wood, vinyl and hotglue, all parts cost less than $20 and can be picked up at various big box stores.

Saturday, December 30, 2006

Gardening Shame

Finally, the whirlwind that is the end of the year is slowly spinning down. Today, I actually have an entire day, a complete 24 hours with NOTHING scheduled. That said, it was also time to face my gardening guilt and shame. Oh woe is me! (SMILE)

In this picture, you may not be able to tell, but my lovely purple lantana in the front, street-side bed has almost totally taken over the azalea and juniper planting behind it. What was I thinking? Didn't I notice this battle going on in my own garden? Frankly, no. I was too absorbed in other projects and that pesky endeavor of making money. I have such base needs these days....food, water, electricity. I can't imagine how I never got around to cleaning this up.

This morning, though, I atoned for my gardening sins, at least in a small way. Joe and I worked together to rake out the front bed and the small parking area in front of it. Then I trimmed back the wayward lantana and removed one entire section of lambs ear. I left a small portion and I am sure it will be back to full size within a month. I also trimmed the lantana away from the lavender plants that will eventually supplant it. They are much prettier and a lot more productive for our family. My wife, Rosanne loves the smell and will are going to start harvesting it each year to use inside the house. If I can get my act together (HA!) I might even get around to taking some cuttings and putting up some extra plants to add to this bed.

My final accomplishment was taking in the majority of our Christmas lights. This sounds like a bigger job than it is, as I only put out a couple of elements and 3 strings of all-white lights. Still, I had time to do this today, whereas next week all bets are off. Rosanne starts 2 new university teaching positions in January and will also be teaching 2 online courses, so life is destined to get a bit busier, at least until we settle into our new schedule. Poor Joe, though, he pouted a bit and said, "We don't take the lights down until New Year's Day!" Oh well, you can't always be the perfect father, I guess.

One big reason for removing the Christmas lights is that 2 strings run along the driveway roses and it is time to do my major pruning. I hope to get to that this week, along with the first pruning of the newly rejuvenated wisteria. That one shouldn't be too hard as their isn't too much growth to manage this first year. I hope to have some video of those projects to share in the podcast. Stay subscribed and you'll receive them automatically.

Elsewhere Online: Start your gardening with a journal and some advice from your neighbor

This newspaper article has some great advice on getting started with a vegetable garden. My own experience always seemed a bit ad hoc. Neither my grandmother or my father ever kept a journal or took any of the advice listed here, but I guess years of experience had taken the place of careful planning by the time I was involved.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Dickens' A Christmas Carol - A Live Reading via Talkshoe.com

Myself, my wife Rosanne, and our great friends Keri Dearborn (Animalbytes blog and podcast) and Michael Lawshe (founder and benefactor of my podcasting feast) gathered together tonight to record the reading using Dicken's own condensed reading version of the story.

We will be putting together more of these specials in the next few months. Plans call for a reading of important speeches and documents for the Fourth of July and a reading of the short works of Edgar Allen Poe for Halloween.

Friday, December 22, 2006

Holiday Gift Guide Final - Amazon Gift Certificate

Despite the fact that we live in the Internet Age, shipping still dictates the arrival of mail and gifts. So, we end out gift guide here, a few days before Christmas, since you can no longer expect to receive delivery before the holidays.

You can, of course, still purchase an Amazon Gift Certificate which can , since it is delivered via email, still arrive before the big day.

I hope you have enjoyed our gift guide this year. I am already collecting ideas for 2007. Please share your comments on the gift guide, or any other portion of the web site, using the comments link below.

You can join us in reading the story by visiting http://talkshoe.com and setting up a FREE account. I can also assist you setting up software so you can CALL IN for free, if you don't have free long distance on your cell phone. Being a reader only requires a telephone or a microphone and headet for your computer.

I will be joined by my wife, Rosanne, some friends and anyone who calls in and wishes to read a section of the story. We will be using a condensed version of A Christmas Carol, created by Dickens for his own public readings.

If you think you might like to join us, as a listener or a reader, please RSVP to douglas@welchwrite.com, so I can get a feel for how many core readers we will have.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Show your support! - Digg our podcasts!

There is a new way to show your support of the WelchWrite podcasts, and individual episodes -- give us a "Digg" over at Digg.com

Digg is a site where people can submit tech stories which people can then vote on. The most popular stories make it to the front page of the site. Digg recently added a podcast section to allow listeners to do the same with their favorite podcasts.

If you enjoy any of the WelchWrite Podcasts, please give us a Digg using the following links:

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Holiday Gift Guide #27 - The Great Potato Book

A serendipitous look though the sorting shelves at my local library led me to The Great Potato Book, which can only be described as raising food fetishism to a new height. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing.

Beautifully photographed and printed on glossy stock, The Great Potato Book presents the humble potato’s history, recipes and an index of potato varieties you have probably never seen. Each description offers appropriate users for the particular variety as well as possible substitutions if you can’t find a certain type in your area. Several recipes caught my eye immediately, including the Italian Potato Pie, Potato-Onion Focaccua and Bacon-Potato Cake.

If I were a collector of food books, The Great Potato Book would certainly find its way onto my bookshelves, or more likely, onto my coffee table, since it is so beautifully designed. Of course, owning this book would make it clear to all your friends that your truly are a “foodie” to the highest degree. For the gardener’s among us, the book gives us images of perfection to strive for in your own garden. You may never reach such heights, but it is always good to have something for which to strive.

Despite its glossiness, the book brought back some pleasant memories of planting and harvesting potatoes with my grandma, many years ago. She planted a half-acre of garden until she was well into her 70’s and taught me most everything I know about gardening.

Each year we would take seed potatoes left over from the previous year and cut them into sections, each containing an eye, These were loaded into peck baskets made of wicker and carried out to the back of her property, where the garden existed. The soil would have been prepared until it was deep and soft, and a dark, chocolate brown. We would then create a long straight row, using the ancient hand cultivator that seemed to belong to a previous century. It looked like a miniature plow with a large metal wheel at the front and wheelbarrow-like handles at the rear. Each of us would then heft a basket and begin walking down the row, dropping potatoes at regular intervals, then stepping on each one to seat it in the soil. Then we would carefully “hill up” each row, giving the new potatoes plenty of room to grow.

Later in the Summer, and into the cold Fall, we would make regular trips out to the garden to gather potatoes for our usual Sunday family supper. It was always amazing to put the garden fork into a seemingly dead part of the garden and turn up a hidden bounty.Despite the typical attacks of potato bugs, dry weather, wet weather and more, I have no memory of Grandma ever buying potatoes. I guess her garden, and her gardening knowledge, made it relatively easy to provide more than enough for everyone.

Food as fetish, food as art and food as memory. Any book that can serve in all these ways is certainly worth a look.

Holiday Gift Guide #26 - The Lost Gardens by Anthony Eglin

The Lost Gardens, the second in a (hopefully) on-going series by Anthony Eglin picks up the story of Professor Lawrence Kingston following the murder and intrigue surrounding the discovery and theft of a unique blue rose, the Holy Grail of gardeners. This story is recounted in "The Blue Rose" and my review can be found in this previous post.

In this new story, Kingston is hired to restore a huge manor garden to its former glory after the property is inherited, unexpectedly and unexplainably, by a young, American woman. When a dis-used chapel is found on the property, complete with a skeleton in its well, Kingston is again involved in detective work, archeological mysteries and murder.

While not quite as action-packed as the first book, The lost Gardens is a grand combination of gardening lore, history, mystery and action-adventure. Kingston become even more likable than before, less curmudgeonly and might even be falling in love again.

Eglin gives a charming feel to the English countryside, despite the untoward events that occur and leads the reader down a wandering garden path to an exciting and satisfying conclusion.

I look forward to more books in this series that combine my interests in gardening and my love of a great mystery.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

I received the message below from artist, Tom Wright, introducing me to his botanical art prints and his plant to donate a portion of each sale to his favorite charity. The art is beautiful, and garden-related, so I am highlighting him today as part of our Holiday Gift Guide. I was especially taken with this print, Angel's Trumpet

My name is Tom Wright. I'm a member of the American Society of Botanical Artists. This year I've begun to market archival quality prints and note cards of my work at www.trowlandsonwright.com. A portion of all sales is being donated to Action Against Hunger -- www.actionagainsthunger.org -- an international, non-governmental, non-religious organization whose mission is to combat hunger, malnutrition and physical suffering.

Please take a moment to visit and if you think these high quality botanical images might appeal to your visitors, I’d greatly appreciate if you could pass the word along and let others know about this site and my effort to support Action Against Hunger.

Holiday Gift Guide #24 - Zen and the Art of Gardening

I came across this book at the library and hae been working my way alowly through it. There are many good hints wrapped inside a developing understanding of Zen concepts. While there are many books about Zen Gardens, this is one of the few about the Zen OF Gardening.

Enjoy!

From Amazon.com...

A new way of looking at and enjoying every aspect of gardening with practical and personal advice. Zen and the Art of Gardening introduces the reader to a deep and spiritual enjoyment of the garden by blending the basics of gardening with Zen meditations. Each chapter begins with a meditation that is followed by advice, stories and pertinent quotes that translate this spiritual way of thinking into everyday life.These inspirational meditations will reconnect you with the earth, water, wildlife and natural forces of the seasons to create harmony and tranquility within both you and your garden.

Saturday, December 16, 2006

What would make a gardener happier than this...free plants AND the chance to play around in the dirt more often...even in Winter.

I have done a little propagation here...making small rosemary cuttings into the beginnings of topiaries and potting up azalea layerings...but this book gives you everything you need to know to create more plants than you can possibly imagine.

Holiday Gift Guide #21 - A Garden Gallery by George Little and David Lewis

A personal look into the gardens of sculptors and garden designers George Little and David Lewis. Their concrete sculptures usually take the form of large leaves,built from impressions of real leaves, large columns or intriguing, dinosaur egg-like spheres.

The book is written in 2 voices, with each author giving their own thoughts on various topics including their personal connection with the garden, plant selection, building water features and more. There are tons of beautiful photos and they offer a host of information on which plants they grow and why.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Holiday Gift Guide #20 - Homescaping by Anne Halpin

Garden books, as a genre, tend to lean in 2 general directions. There are the books filled with beautiful pictures, but not much information and, on the other side, are books that are pages and pages of text with little or no design. Homescaping by Anne Halpin proves that a gardening book can be both beautiful and informative.

There are plenty of "Plant Finder" lists, which recommend plants for many different scenarios, but the book never devolves into an endless list of possibilities. Other sections include garden styles, color-coordinating house and garden, landscaping, structures and more.

I found this to be a great book to browse at random whenever I had a few moments. You can easily pick up 2-3 great tips each time you pick it up. After my initial browsing, though, I am now working through the book cover to cover, trying to gather all the good information it can offer.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Holiday Gift Guide #19 - Fiskars 79366935 PowerGear Pruner

This are my favorite pruners of any I have owned. They come especially handy during the end-of-year rose pruning. I tend to do all the roses in 1 or 2 days and my hand can get quite tired after 30-40 roses. The rotating handle on these pruners takes the strain off of your hand and gives you a gear-assisted boost to get through the more stubborn canes.

Monday, December 11, 2006

Holiday Gift Guide #18 - Garden Structures

I am always looking for books to spur my thinking, gardening and otherwise, and this one caught my eye at the library the other day. I am researching ways to dress up my cement block walls and a tumble-down fence on the south side of the garden. This book has some wonderful examples of garden structures and how they can be used to add excitement and beauty.

Holiday Gift Guide #17 - The Curious Gardener

The Curious Gardener is a collection of Dahl's previous 3 books, much of which were originally created as weekly gardening columns. The 3 books include How to Eat a Lily (1995), The Stinking Garden (1997) and The Curious Gardener (1998). Each book is divided into easy-to-read sections, probably due to their origin as columns.

According to my library record, I have renewed this book twice, each time for 3 weeks and it is rapidly approaching time to renew it again. This means a total of 6-7 weeks to read one book. How could it possibly take so long to work through 250 pages? The fact is, this book was perfect for dipping into whenever I needed a change of pace. Its short section invited a few moments spent in the joys of gardening before returning to more mundane work. It was a gentle friend in the evenings when no more thoughts of computers or email or web pages could be processed.

It seems to happen more frequently than I would like, but I often find myself wanting to meet authors who have already passed from this world. From his writing, Dahl would have been an interesting gardening pen pal. It would have been a joy to read his columns as they were created, rather than in this final collection of his best. Still, I can enjoy the fact that his work was deemed important enough to collect and translate into English.

The Curious Gardener would be a great book for the reading chair and night stand as Fall approaches and quickly turns to Winter. You could lose yourself in the pages as snow flies and your own garden sleeps and wake with new ideas, new thoughts and a new garden come the Springtime.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Elsewhere Online: Book: The Million Dollar Garden

This book description from Cold Climate Gardening has certainly enticed me to pick up this book. There is something very special about being allowed to follow the creation and progression of a great garden.

I've often thought my biggest hindrance to becoming a professional garden designer is my aversion to spending money, mine or anyone else’s. Consequently, I tend to filter out great-but expensive-ideas almost as soon as I’ve thought them, even at the risk of being penny-wise but pound-foolish. So it should surprise no one that I find The Greater Perfection: The Story of the Gardens at Les Quatre Vents mind boggling.

Holiday Gift Guide #16 - Handy Farm Devices and How to Make Them

This is a great book for lost knowledge that can still be useful today. I love to try and re-use materials around my house and yard when they no longer provide their original purpose. There is information on gardening, tying knots, supporting fence posts and removing them, building walls and more. Just because information is old doesn't mean it isn't still useful.

Friday, December 08, 2006

Holiday Gift Guide #15 - Plants in the Getty Garden

We live only a mile or two from the Getty Center here in Los Angeles. It has become one of our regular places to visit when they have their regular Family Day events as well as any time we need a brief respite from the city.

One of my favorite parts of the center is the Central Garden designed by Robert irwin. Unlike any other garden I have ever visited, it offers a wonderful collection of experiences as you wander down via the zig-zagging path that follows a stream.

One disappointment, especially for a gardener, is that there are no identifyig labels or signs at all. You are left to your own devices to figure out what everything is. This is why I consider Plants in the Getty's Central Garden an "must have" if you are looking for a deeper understanding of the garden.

The book includes a Foward by Robert Irwin, three essays on the garden discussing its design and creation and a photo illustrated guide to all the plants you might encounter there. The garden does change, season by season, so you may not find everything listed and you might find new items that have been added since the book was written.

Even after visiting the Getty Center so many times over the past few years, this book will give me a new opportunity to see the garden in a fresh light.You can find some of my pictures from the garden by visiting these photo galleries:

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Holiday Gift Guide #14 - Fields of Plenty

MIchael Ableman leaves his own farm in Canada in order to visit other organic farmers throughout the United States. He is on a search for "real food" among all the industrial agriculture that farming has become.

The people he visits are all quirky, but each in their own unique ways. They share one common concern, though, and that is the dilution of the term "organic" as it applies to food and agriculture. As with any popular trend, the organic movement is now in the domain of government and bureaucracy with all the costs and benefits that brings.

Reading this book was like returning to my childhood when I rode from farm to farm with my father as he repaired farm equipment for all our neighbors. In return, they would harvest our fields in the Fall. It was always interesting to see how each farmer found their own path through the wilderness...choosing different equipment, different crops, different methods. I found that Ableman's experiences ring true to my own experiences growing up.

Like all good books about food, this book made me hungry as I moved from chapter to chapter. Even though I am a notoriously picky eater, the thought of tasting a ripe peach, fresh from the tree, or blackberries straight from the bush made my mouth water.

It is good to know that there are still farmers who hold to a smaller ideal in their farms -- who nurture each plant with the care it deserves, coaxing out the best food possible. You should seek them out at your local farmer's market. I am sure you will be pleasantly surprised.

Holiday Gift Guide #13 - Sunset Western Garden Book

must have for the Western Gardener. This is the first book I bought when I bought my house and inherited a 10 year old garden. Coming from Ohio, I didn't have any idea what some of these plants were. Sunset Western Garden helped me out a lot in the early days and still has a place on my shelf today

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Event: Urban Garden Talks at Walt Disney Concert Hall

Note: This is a great excuse to take the Metro Red Line and other mass transit. A $3 Day Pass will allow you to avoid the parking fee and experience a little of the growing mass transit infrastructure of LA.

Red Line Stop: Civic Center

Valley folks can also take the Orange Line Busway to the North Hollywood Red Line Station and Pasadena area folks can use the Metro Gold Line for a more extensive trip.

The Urban Garden located at the Music Center’s Walt Disney Concert Hall is an oasis in the bustling urban landscape of Downtown Los Angeles. The third in a series of quarterly talks in the Garden - sponsored and presented by Estate Gardens by ValleyCrest – features guest speaker Brian Helgoe, General Manager Estate Gardens by ValleyCrest discussing winter pruning.

The Urban Garden Talks are designed to provide gardeners at any level with tips on creating and maintaining a healthy and vibrant landscape, each talk in the series features a different topic in garden design and maintenance.

The talks are free and begin at 12 p.m. in the W.M. Keck Foundation Children’s Amphitheatre. A tour of the Urban Garden immediately follows each event. The tour explores the nearly 1-acre garden, its 45 blooming trees, and 15-ton Delftware, rose shaped fountain. This tour is almost entirely outdoors. Duration of talk and tour is approximately 60 minutes.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Holiday Gift Guide #12 - The Blue Rose by Anthony Eglin

I am in the middle of this book, part of a series of "English Garden Mysteries", but I wanted to tell you about it, even before I reach the end.

A great combination of gardening and mystery, The Blue Rose, tells the story of a couple who, upon purchasing and refurbishing an old parsonage garden, come across a once in a lifetime discovery...a blue rose.

I am in Chapter 9 and things are beginning to heat up as word about the rose leaks out. People and companies across the globe want to have this rose, some more unscrupulous than others.

Paperwhites - P-a-D 12/04/2006

The first paperwhites of the season greeted me this morning as I walked out the back door. It is always amazing to me to see bulbs flowering at this time of year. According to my calendar, it looks like they are blooming a bit early this year. I show Jan. 1 as the date in 2004.

Friday, December 01, 2006

Holiday Gift Guide #9 - Roots, shoots, buckets and boots

I know that my son is fascinated with what goes on in our garden, so I am sure other children feel much the same way. The books includes ideas for engaging your children in the wonders of growing your own plants, whether for food or decoration.